Human Trafficking Worldwide: A Brief Overview

How Trafficking Thrives and Prospers Around the Globe, and What You Can Do to Fight Back

“Labor trafficking and sex trafficking persist and thrive for a number of reasons, including:

Low Risk: Lack of government and law enforcement training, low community awareness, ineffective or unused laws, lack of law enforcement investigation, scarce resources for victim recovery services, and social blaming of victims.

High Profits: When individuals are willing to buy commercial sex, they create a market and make it profitable for traffickers to sexually exploit children and adults. When consumers are willing to buy goods and services from industries that rely on forced labor, they create a profit incentive for labor traffickers to maximize revenue with minimal production costs.”

Together, with Friends of WPC Nepal, we can fight against human trafficking by Spreading Awareness.

We believe that education is the first step to defeating human trafficking.

#1 Tactic – Deceptive Promises

In most cases, victims are lured away from home by traffickers with promises of decent employment, a chance for a good education or simply a way to a better life. This is especially prevalent in developing countries but is not limited to them and happens in developed countries as well.

However, what they encounter is not a better life. In fact, their freedom is stripped from them. To experience abuse, violence, deprivation and torture is normal for a victim. This usually leads to trauma which is difficult to treat due to the atrocities that are endured. They constantly live in fear.

#2 Tactic: Forced Servitude, Breaking Self-Worth

If a person has had to experience human trafficking, they have known a life worse than death itself. Sometimes they try to escape. When they do, they get punished, and this can be almost unimaginable to anyone with a conscience. One person once had to submerge their body in a barrel filled with water contaminated with scorpion and other vermin, and sit there for one week. As if that wasn’t enough, they also had to sit in the darkness all alone.

Another way to make the victims more cooperative would be to inject them with drugs, leading to addiction, which meant the brothel was eventually their lifeline. Many people who have been trafficked fought it at first, but eventually accepted they lost that battle from the beginning. They have even been seen smiling and flirting, but it is only an act. On the inside, they are broken and crying.

Human trafficking affects every country of the world, as country of origin, transit, or destination. Victims from at least 152 countries have been found to be exploited in 124 countries across the world. At least 510 trafficking flows have been detected.”

Even though there have been reports and studies done on human trafficking it is impossible to declare the actual number of persons being trafficked. This is because of how hidden of an industry human trafficking actually is and there are many people who are affected that have not been declared.

By educating yourself, you can educate your community and fight against human trafficking today.